Mining activities mainly deal with the excavation of raw material from earth’s crust. The sources of particulate matter (PM) emission in opencast coal mines include blasting and drilling operations, coal handling plant operation, loading and transport of overburden and coal by shovel-dumper combination, crushing, conveying and handling of overburden by draglines, and vehicular emission from unp...

Two groups of 48 rats of the AF/HAN strain were exposed for one year to respirable dust clouds of UICC chrysotile asbestos at a dose level of 10 mg/m3. One group was treated with dust carrying the normal electrostatic charge produced during dust generation, whereas the other was exposed to dust discharged by exposure to ionising radiation from a thallium-204 source. After dusting most animals w...

OBJECTIVES The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) outlines specific requirements governing the use of respiratory protection for workers dealing with dust or other aerosolized compounds. Health care workers may be exposed to bone dust produced during otologic procedures, creating an occupational hazard. The purpose of this research was to quantify the total suspended particula...

Many different types of surface mining equipment use enclosed cabs to protect equipment operators from health and safety hazards. The overburden removal and mining process can be extremely dusty and can cause excessive dust exposure. To study this issue, a cooperative research effort was established between the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, U.S. Silica Co., Clean Air Fi...

OBJECTIVE Workplace aerosol sampling is challenged by its influencing factors and methodological limitations. Some factors, including blank setting, electrostatic effect, sample mass gain, and limit of detection (LOD), were studied to characterize them further and thereby to improve the sampling method. METHODS Through a field sampling in two shipyards and by an analysis of a large amount of ...

Present estimates of the quantitative relations between exposure to mixed respirable coalmine dust and risk of developing coalworkes' simple pneumoconiosis are based on studies of working miners. These studies did not include men who had been miners but had left the coal industry, and it was not known whether the estimates of risk were also appropriate for these men. The results are reported of...

Coal-mine owners are required to measure miner exposures to respirable dust so that compliance with Federal health regulations can be monitored. This study analyzes the problem of possible underreporting of dust exposures. Using two statistical approaches, data for three mining occupations in 54 large underground coal mines during 1976-1978 are examined for evidence of underreporting. First, re...

Grain dusts contain a variety of materials which are potentially hazardous to the health of workers in the grain industry. Because the characterization of grain dusts is incomplete, we are defining the botanical, chemical, and microbial contents of several grain dusts collected from grain elevators in the Duluth-Superior regions of the U.S. Here, we report certain of the carbohydrate and protei...